John Kelly's Top 10 albums of 2022

In no particular order, here goes...

Aldous Harding – Warm Chris (4AD Records)

There's no shortage of music falling into those extremely vague categories of psychedelic folk and folk pop. Much of it gets lost in the shuffle and, on the turntables of the especially impatient, it rarely does enough to hold the listener for very long. Aldous Harding has long been a beguiling exception and, to my mind, she’s one of the best of the bunch. Her music has a pop sensibility that somehow manages to be both sparse and dense at the same time. And, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t always make perfect sense. And I’m all for that.

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Rise Jamaica! Jamaican Independence Special (Trojan)

Released to mark the 60th anniversary of Jamaican Independence, this is a collection of big hits and previously unissued tracks all recorded in 1962. Jimmy Cliff, Don Drummond, Derrick Morgan and Owen Gray all feature, while the previously unissued tracks are all Duke Reid productions that have been waiting six decades for a dance. Track 1 – Independence Time Is Here (Rise Jamaica) – sets the tone perfectly for what is both a joyous celebration and fascinating history lesson. It features Al T. Joe – a Fats Domino tribute act recorded at a time when most Jamaican music was based on the rhythm and blues of New Orleans and the American South. This is pre-ska and pre-reggae, and at just the moment when Jamaica was happily finding both its dancing and political feet.

Beth Orton – Weather Alive (Partisan Records)

I’ve been a Beth Orton fan for many years. Folktronica was the box they put her in, and while such labels rarely serve an artist well, it did acknowledge her willingness to collaborate with he likes of The Chemical Brothers and William Orbit. Weather Alive is her eighth album and while I’d perfectly understand some fans sticking their pin in an earlier one, I think it’s her best yet. Self-produced, the fragility of the whole thing can make for an uneasy listen in places, and I say that in tribute to what she has achieved – realising songs in ways that draw the listener in while, at the same time, expressing a deep sense of isolation. It’s an atmosphere, yes, but not a contrived one. It’s as if the songs themselves are happening in the raw and risky moment, and are somehow leading Beth into their own farthest reaches. Artist that she is, she goes there.

Makaya McCraven – In These Times (International Anthem/Nonesuch)

Makaya McCraven is a drummer , composer and producer - a beat scientist with a reputation for editing, looping, pitching and layering. He’s been making great music for years now, collaborating with others and sometimes reimagining the works of others, notably We’re New Again – a reimagining what was the final studio album from Gil-Scott Heron. In These Times, doubtless as much a reference to time signatures as anything else, is an eleven track suite of often curiously metered compositions with large ensemble arrangements and all the "edit-heavy organic beat music" for which he’s known. Credit also to the label, International Anthem. I could fill a top ten with their releases alone.

Duval Timothy – Meeting With a Judas Tree (Carrying Colour Records)

A short and beautiful album of six instrumental piano based tracks (with added electronics, guitar and bass) from a true renaissance man. Duval, who divides his time between London and Sierra Leone, is also a painter, a hat-maker, a sneaker designer and a brewer of ginger beer. Meeting With a Judas Tree employs a piano once owned by Alma Mahler and also field recordings of insects, birds, bats, plants, stones and the human voice, all recorded on his wanders around South London and Freetown. Two further pieces of useful information on Duval Timothy: 1. His name is to be found in the credits of another of my albums of the year, Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and 2. He dresses only in blue.

Elvis Costello & The Imposters – The Boy Named If (Capitol/EMI)

Now up for a Grammy, here we have an album made in the extraordinary circumstances of lockdown. Elvis and the various Imposters were on different continents, confined to their own basements and back gardens, and yet they somehow they managed to make an album that’s up there with EC’s very best. The man himself has suggested that they may even have played better and with less inhibition in this way, although I suspect that this might only work with a band like The Imposters – one of the great bands after all. A separate album, the just issued The Boy Named If: Alive at Memphis Magnetic is a recording of what happened when they finally did assemble to rehearse for a tour, playing these songs together for the very first time. Great songs, great band, two great albums.

Telefís – a Dó (Dimple Discs)

The death of Cathal Coughlan in May of this year was a hard blow for his family, his friends and his many fans. There is however some comfort in the fact that the final release as Telefís is such a powerful statement from a remarkable and visionary talent. Collaborating with Garret "Jacknife" Lee, a Dó (a follow-up to a hAon) is a rare and complex thing – all those beats and synths mixed with Cathal’s poetic and political sensibilities. Here is our man in London looking back to an Ireland of showbands, Shannon Airport and the extraordinary Strawboy Supernova. An electro-pop concept album sprung from the early quirks of the Telifís Éireann and by the sheer stature of Big Tom McBride.

Jeremy Cunningham / Dustin Laurenzi / Paul Bryan – A Better Ghost (Northern Spy)

We’re back on the Chicago jazz scene for this one with two close collaborators, Cunningham and Laurenzi, themselves collaborating with the LA based producer and bassist Paul Bryan. These are literally phone-recorded improvisations with Laurenzi creating his sequences and samples while on tour with Bon Iver. As a drummer Cunningham has worked with all the greats of the Chicago scene such as Jeff Parker, and is yet another example of a musician, especially in jazz, who sees himself as a drummer and composer. The result is pure sonic adventure, both for the musicians and the listener, and the remarkable passage at the end of the opening track Everything says it all. The welcome spoken voice of Sonny Rollins. "It’s all good," he says, "and in that, my greatest joy is everything."

Ordnance Survey – Nomos: Ó Riada Reimagined (Scintilla Records)

Neil O’Connor, as Ordnance Survey, has been making some marvellous music over the years. I’m not at all qualified to explain what exactly is going on but here goes. In the field of Spectral Music, decisions can be informed by sonographic representations and a mathematical analysis of sound spectra. Its unique musical possibilities are enabled by innovations within acoustics and psychoacoustics and so Nomos: O'Riada Reimagined uses technology itself as a mode of expression. If you’re looking for the tune in Mise Éire or Planxty Irwin you might have to listen harder than you’re used to listening, but the end result is a thing of beauty in itself. The Master himself would surely approve.

Wayne Shorter – Adam’s Apple (Blue Note)

I spend most of my time with reissues. Blue Note Records does it best and I could maybe pick any of them, but this exceptional release recorded in 1966 is well worth your time. With Herbie Hancock on piano, Reggie Workman on bass and Joe Chambers on drums it’s another very fine album on a label full of very fine albums. Of particular interest to jazz historians, it features the original version of Footprints, a track that Shorter would re-record later in the same year on the Miles Davis album Miles Smiles. That said, there’s a lot about Adam’s Apple that may not have seemed particularly ambitious at the time – especially in light of what he had already done (and what was yet to come) but then the very best artists never move in straight lines, and certainly not in ways that others might expect them to.

John Kelly presents Mystery Train on RTÉ lyric fm every Sun - Thu from 7pm - listen back here.

John Kelly's Top 10 albums of 2022

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